Русский корабль - иди нахуй

[MillerEP 30339]

 

[MillerEP 30339]

 

[The Dog 43805]

 

[The Dog 43805]

 

[JesusSweatDuck 17780]

1 minute ago, The Dog said:

 

Wow, that's surprising

[MillerEP 30339]

 

[MillerEP 30339]

 

[MissingInAction 24822]

15 hours ago, Gatorubet said:

Must have missed that Surly tailgate.1

[BehoId, The Underminer! 11668]

29 minutes ago, The Dog said:

 

Wow.  They’ve been whipping ass with B- materiel.  Now they’re going to get the A+?

[MillerEP 30339]

 

[MillerEP 30339]

 

[Dahobbs 17447]

2 minutes ago, BehoId, The Underminer! said:

Wow.  They’ve been whipping ass with B- materiel.  Now they’re going to get the A+?

More like A-. The export versions lack some pretty important features. 

[Pescado_Rojo 19331]

47 minutes ago, The Dog said:

 

[Viper 12030]

51 minutes ago, The Dog said:

 

Do you think they'll fall for this? 

[Chad Fuck 17566]

1 minute ago, Viper said:

Do you think they'll fall for this? 

What are they gonna do?  Buy MiGs?

 

[NorthLoop 14093]

4 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

Damn, Wagner is probably saving the Russian government a lot of money on incarcerating prisoners.

Putin is a master strategist..

 

Honestly though I'm sure that factored into it. 

[atomheartbevo 89447]

10 minutes ago, NorthLoop said:

Putin is a master strategist..

Honestly though I'm sure that factored into it. 

Putin would go along with that, but I doubt he'll allow Wagner to merge with Kadyrov's people, because that seems to get really dicey for him in terms of potential rivals.  Kadyrov's men seem more loyal to Kadyrov than Mother Russia, which is the same with Wagner's (many of whom are convicts and probably have no love for the state).

[Gatorubet 30105]

1 hour ago, The Dog said:

 

[Bateshorn 9903]

51 minutes ago, MillerEP said:

 

Lol, the Swiss must have finished stealing and hiding whatever Russian assets got trapped and are now ready to move forward. 

[Felix 599]

Little primer on tank maintenance from a former tanker.  Battlefield maintenance is surprisingly easy due to the power pack being a self contained unit that can be pulled from the vehicle in a matter of minutes by trained mechanics.  We could typically pull and replace a power pack in about an hour if we had to.  The whole pack is then sent back to the maintenance depot and repaired there by specialist mechanics. In my day a typical battalion maintenance depot would have one additional power pack available for every 10 in operation with a constant rotation as they are repaired and cycled back into vehicles. 

Track replacement was similar with so called combat rolls available for operations where an entire track was delivered in roll, so that a tank could literally drive off of a bad or broken track onto a new one.  You didn't really drive, you were pulled by an M-88 repair track.  Suspension maintenance could and was mostly done by the crews themselves up to and including replacing torsion bars and road wheels.

So drive train and suspension work is pretty simple even under bad conditions.  We replaced power packs and track in the field all the time and unless conditions were really bad we usually didn't lose more than a couple of hours of operational time doing it.

Turret maintenance is a different story, but most of that is electronic or hydraulic in nature. Computers could be replaced and calibrated in a matter of hours, but then required bore sighting and test firing.  No biggie and standard stuff for all crews.  Hydraulic issues or turret stabilization issues would generally require depot level maintenance but with good PM were pretty rare.

Battle damage, of course, is a different animal but a well established maintenance unit can do wonders and can do it fast and not too far in the rear. 

Also something I haven't seen discussed.  The Abrams is a multifuel vehicle.  They use JP now but in my day we ran them on diesel.  Smoke generators, holla!  Pour raw diesel into the exhaust and you can make some serious smoke.  I'm not sure how much tuning is required but we were trained that in a pinch you could put just about any fuel in that bitch and she'd run. 

I'll try to answer questions, but my last model was the M1A1.  I saw a demo M1A2 before I got out but they weren't deployed yet.

[statsman 5425]

This may be controversial. If so, fire away. I think:
1. It is right for the US to support Ukraine, militarily, to win this war. 
2. It is even more right for Europe to support Ukraine militarily, but they are happy to passive aggressively position themselves so Uncle Sam picks up most of the bill (talking about France and Germany, mainly, but others, too, to different extents. They just don’t spend on defense). 
3. When this is over, repairing Ukraine will be ridiculously expensive. Again, Europe will guide us into paying that bill. 
4. We (the USA) must resist. We need to do nothing, and let Europe pick up that check. We must, because:
5. Taiwan is under a similar threat, from the PRC. Europe will not help against China, not militarily and probably not with sanctions. They are too in bed, economically, with China. The US can’t assume the cost of restoring Ukraine because we have to build up military stores, to be a credible threat against China. Private charity is fine, but none of this “you broke it, you own it” business. 

Edited January 26, 2023 by statsman

[Gengs1 2583]

1 hour ago, The Dog said:

 

Which side controls the approval? 
house or senate or both. 

[BehoId, The Underminer! 11668]

4 minutes ago, statsman said:

This may be controversial. If so, fire away. I think:
1. It is right for the US to support Ukraine, militarily, to win this war. 
2. It is even more right for Europe to support Ukraine militarily, but they are happy to passive aggressively position themselves so Uncle Sam picks up the bill. 
3. When this is over, repairing Ukraine will be ridiculously expensive. Again, Europe will guide us into paying that bill. 
4. We (the USA) must resist. We need to do nothing, and let Europe pick up that check. We must, because:
5. Taiwan is under a similar threat, from the PRC. Europe will not help against China, not militarily and probably not with sanctions. They are too in bed, economically, with China. The US can’t assume the cost of restoring Ukraine because we have to build up military stores, to be a credible threat against China. Private charity is fine, but none of this “you broke it, you own it” business. 

The tab may end up smaller than we think because we have so much seized Russian assets.

[statsman 5425]

3 minutes ago, BehoId, The Underminer! said:

The tab may end up smaller than we think because we have so much seized Russian assets.

I see a lot of wrecked cities and supporting utilities infrastructure 

[Gatorubet 30105]

12 minutes ago, statsman said:

This may be controversial. If so, fire away. I think:
1. It is right for the US to support Ukraine, militarily, to win this war. 
2. It is even more right for Europe to support Ukraine militarily, but they are happy to passive aggressively position themselves so Uncle Sam picks up the bill. 
3. When this is over, repairing Ukraine will be ridiculously expensive. Again, Europe will guide us into paying that bill. 
4. We (the USA) must resist. We need to do nothing, and let Europe pick up that check. We must, because:
5. Taiwan is under a similar threat, from the PRC. Europe will not help against China, not militarily and probably not with sanctions. They are too in bed, economically, with China. The US can’t assume the cost of restoring Ukraine because we have to build up military stores, to be a credible threat against China. Private charity is fine, but none of this “you broke it, you own it” business. 

I hope at the point the war ends that Russia is so hopelessly fucked that they have no option but to agree to some kind of reparations agreement.   IOW, you can keep half of your oil and gas profits but the rest goes to repair Ukraine.

[Bevo in VA 342]

1 hour ago, statsman said:

This may be controversial. If so, fire away. I think:
1. It is right for the US to support Ukraine, militarily, to win this war. 
2. It is even more right for Europe to support Ukraine militarily, but they are happy to passive aggressively position themselves so Uncle Sam picks up most of the bill (talking about France and Germany, mainly, but others, too, to different extents. They just don’t spend on defense). 
3. When this is over, repairing Ukraine will be ridiculously expensive. Again, Europe will guide us into paying that bill. 
4. We (the USA) must resist. We need to do nothing, and let Europe pick up that check. We must, because:
5. Taiwan is under a similar threat, from the PRC. Europe will not help against China, not militarily and probably not with sanctions. They are too in bed, economically, with China. The US can’t assume the cost of restoring Ukraine because we have to build up military stores, to be a credible threat against China. Private charity is fine, but none of this “you broke it, you own it” business. 

Ukraine has already sacrificed 10s of thousands of their people to destroy one of our greatest advisories.  The money we've given them has been a drop in the bucket relative to the amounts we have spent on our military and other armed conflicts over the years.  This has been the greatest use of our military budget ever with respect to fighting the enemy.  Not to mention no US soldier has died to get to this result.  I feel Ukraine has earned every penny we have given them and then some.  I'm more than willing to lead reconstruction efforts after the war as a big thanks to the sacrifices they have made to destroy one of the most toxic countries on the planet.

[Kel Varnsen 8430]

[Parliament 14138]

3 hours ago, The Dog said:

 

I need to update my gangbang meme.

[Parliament 14138]

6 hours ago, MissingInAction said:

This needs to be spammed all over russia.. maybe the few soldiers with phones will see it and just fucking give up.

When Sweden joins NATO, they'll send the bikini team to run them.

[atomheartbevo 89447]

1 hour ago, statsman said:

2. It is even more right for Europe to support Ukraine militarily, but they are happy to passive aggressively position themselves so Uncle Sam picks up most of the bill (talking about France and Germany, mainly, but others, too, to different extents. They just don’t spend on defense). 

I believe the EU as a whole has actually put more into this than the US has (or it's extremely close), and not just in terms of the cost of taking in millions of refugees, but armaments, money, other aid, etc.,  If you get into individual countries' GDP numbers, some European countries are punching well above their weight class, especially the smaller countries.

The US is actually spending very little, especially when compared to our defense budget, and if you want to look at it in a cold/rational manner, every bit of Russian hardware that is destroyed in Ukraine, is Russian hardware that won't end up in some other part of the world, presenting a future threat to us or our markets, as well as diminishing Russia's ability to fuck around elsewhere.

Oh, and a whole lot of the stuff we are sending over was sitting in storage or slated to be replaced/surplused.  We have thousands of Abrams in storage, thousands of Bradleys, thousands of M113s, thousands of Humbles, just sitting there, doing nothing other than costing us storage/maintenance, because we drastically reduced our military in the 90s after the Soviet Union collapsed, or we have newer systems on the horizon - they are all slated to be replaced, but we keep them in storage "just in case" even though we couldn't ramp up the US military fast enough to actually man and use them.

And we do this not just because we present ourselves as leaders of the free world, but because we are Europe's largest economic partner, and we export hundreds of billions of dollars of goods and services to the EU every year.  It's the same reason why we have such a massive military, such a massive Navy - world stability is good for our markets.

And we damn sure don't want the Russians controlling so much of the world's food supply, because they can cause instability in South America/Africa due to rising food prices, and in the case of South America, that will drive people to head for our border.

1 hour ago, statsman said:

3. When this is over, repairing Ukraine will be ridiculously expensive. Again, Europe will guide us into paying that bill. 

Europe is already putting a lot into repairing infrastructure right now.

1 hour ago, statsman said:

5. Taiwan is under a similar threat, from the PRC. Europe will not help against China, not militarily and probably not with sanctions. They are too in bed, economically, with China. The US can’t assume the cost of restoring Ukraine because we have to build up military stores, to be a credible threat against China. Private charity is fine, but none of this “you broke it, you own it” business. 

Stop listening to Russian and Chinese propaganda, we are not hurting our military readiness in terms of China.  It's a completely different scenario, for a lot of reasons, including that we are not sending our best stuff to Ukraine, and especially because of that whole water thing. China simply doesn't have the military built to cross 100 miles of open, hostile water, with a very limited selection in terms of landing beaches, all of which are easily defended.  For fuck's sake, they are relying on civilian cruise ships as troop transports - those fucking things throw off a radar signature that would be seen from Taiwan.  One Harpoon would put thousands of Chinese soldiers on the bottom of the ocean.  And the Chinese military would have to make a lot of trips across that 100 miles of open water, and as they lose more and more amphibious and landing support ships, they would need to make even more trips with the remaining ships, and it's just a fucking nightmare for the Chinese.  There's a reason why we did Normandy the way we did, and why we planned to invade Japan the way we did, and China is doing none of that, and they have to face modern weapons that can hit over the horizon.

It's like German threatening England in WWII - they only had fucking river barges, which would do them no good crossing the English Channel (and they'd probably have more of those barges swamped on their own than destroyed by the Brits).

But wait, there's more.  The US alone, if we didn't step in to help Taiwan, just our cutting off trade to China if China tried, would completely destroy China's economy and put hundreds of millions of Chinese in the streets, and would put them on a crash-course to starvation and mass chaos, which their military is not large enough to handle.  The Chinese made the mistake of relying too heavily on us.

 

[Shaddie 1638]

3 minutes ago, Parliament said:

When Sweden joins NATO, they'll send the bikini team to run them.

No. However at military “sales” shows the Swedish bikini team will definitely be “displaying” said equipment. 

[MissingInAction 24822]

1 hour ago, statsman said:

This may be controversial. If so, fire away. I think:
1. It is right for the US to support Ukraine, militarily, to win this war. 
2. It is even more right for Europe to support Ukraine militarily, but they are happy to passive aggressively position themselves so Uncle Sam picks up most of the bill (talking about France and Germany, mainly, but others, too, to different extents. They just don’t spend on defense). 
3. When this is over, repairing Ukraine will be ridiculously expensive. Again, Europe will guide us into paying that bill. 
4. We (the USA) must resist. We need to do nothing, and let Europe pick up that check. We must, because:
5. Taiwan is under a similar threat, from the PRC. Europe will not help against China, not militarily and probably not with sanctions. They are too in bed, economically, with China. The US can’t assume the cost of restoring Ukraine because we have to build up military stores, to be a credible threat against China. Private charity is fine, but none of this “you broke it, you own it” business. 

With all due respect:

[Post Oak 20187]

I read on Twitter a couple of weeks ago that so far the money we sent to Ukraine amounted to $14 per American. 

I'm not sure if that was monthly  or all together .  

Money well spent

[Lurch 5921]

I think we’ve spent or allocated $100B so far, so $300 per American. We spend $3k per American per year on our defense budget, for perspective.

[Sawbonz 27434]

28 minutes ago, Post Oak said:

I read on Twitter a couple of weeks ago that so far the money we sent to Ukraine amounted to $14 per American. 

I'm not sure if that was monthly  or all together .  

Money well spent

[Bevo 13527]

27 minutes ago, Lurch said:

I think we’ve spent or allocated $100B so far, so $300 per American. We spend $3k per American per year on our defense budget, for perspective.

And that is probably using 300 Million in the denominator. I'm strongly for supporting Ukraine, but be we should be careful about using dubious stats to justify it.

[Brisketexan 104624]

So, every person who thought that we could utterly destroy the conventional Russian military with a couple hundred billion dollars, and no American casualties, raise your hand.

Seriously. This war is one of the greatest “bang for our buck” exercises ever. And yes, we should damn well acknowledge the huge price that is being paid in Ukrainian blood and suffering, on behalf of themselves and the rest of the world. Damn right we should be part of the reconstruction effort; we did so with respect to the UK, Germany, France…and the mutual prosperity was astronomical. Rebuilding European countries (and let’s not forget similar exercises with Japan and Korea) has a proven great ROI. When this is done, we should have a great reconstruction effort in Ukraine, build up a great economy, and have fantastic ties with them and their enterprises going forward. Think generationally here. The world I described, most people couldn’t have imagined in 1945…or even 1955. But by 1970, Western Europe was prosperous.

[Schulz2.0 28771]

 

[bolverk 29399]

2 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

I believe the EU as a whole has actually put more into this than the US has (or it's extremely close), and not just in terms of the cost of taking in millions of refugees, but armaments, money, other aid, etc.,  If you get into individual countries' GDP numbers, some European countries are punching well above their weight class, especially the smaller countries.

 

This is correct, or it was as of this past Thanksgiving. If anyone cares to look into the numbers, other charts are available that break it down by type of aid and country.

[The Dog 43805]

Worth it.

BTW, Krauts have stepped up more than they have been given credit for - just mangled the external PR.

[Leeroy Jenkins 2393]

9 hours ago, Pescado_Rojo said:

I doubt we have any spare P8s to give them, but there's probably a bunch of recently decommissioned P3s in the boneyard, or even in service with reserve units. We could send @Leeroy Jenkins over to train them on it and feed us insider info. I for one would pay $9.95 for that kind of info. 

I’m down.  I go by  Leeroy Jenkins for a reason.  

[AUS-97HORN 11682]

12 minutes ago, Leeroy Jenkins said:

I’m down.  I go by  Leeroy Jenkins for a reason.  

at least you have chicken?

[Armybrat 40744]

siap

 

[InkaUtexas 25518]

Give them what they need. Ukraine needs the ability to hammer the Russian artillery positions. 

 

[KYHorn 16865]

1 hour ago, The Dog said:

Worth it.

BTW, Krauts have stepped up more than they have been given credit for - just mangled the external PR.

Also doesn't account for humanitarian aid, including the refugees the European countries have taken in.

[Gatorubet 30105]

19 minutes ago, KYHorn said:

Also doesn't account for humanitarian aid, including the refugees the European countries have taken in.

Great point. 

[Pato del Muerto 52342]

Is dollars, or any currency, the best way to account for support via military equipment?  Things cost varied amounts. 
 

and yeah we also aren’t dealing with the levels of Russian long term tourists and refugees that Europe is.  That also needs accounting on the big ledger. 

[atomheartbevo 89447]

4 hours ago, Bevo said:

And that is probably using 300 Million in the denominator. I'm strongly for supporting Ukraine, but be we should be careful about using dubious stats to justify it.

41 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Is dollars, or any currency, the best way to account for support via military equipment?  Things cost varied amounts. 

and yeah we also aren’t dealing with the levels of Russian long term tourists and refugees that Europe is.  That also needs accounting on the big ledger. 

And how many of the vehicles that we've donated were just sitting around, either in storage, or on their way to storage.  Some people are acting like we are straight up giving Ukraine the money, or giving them our best stuff, when the fucking M113s entered service in 1960 and the Bradley's entered in 1981.

As a matter of fact, the Army is in the process of replacing over 2,800 M113s with the Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle (which is based on the Bradley chassis, but not the existing Bradleys, which will also be replaced/are being replaced by the AMPVs and other systems.

And those Humvees?  We have over 230,000 of them in the Army and the Marine Corps, and they are being replaced by the Oshkosh L-ATV

Almost everything we are sending, with the exception of the HIMARS (which are themselves from the 1990s) and the M777s is old shit.  We were paying to store this shit and now it's being put to good use.

3 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

Seriously. This war is one of the greatest “bang for our buck” exercises ever. And yes, we should damn well acknowledge the huge price that is being paid in Ukrainian blood and suffering, on behalf of themselves and the rest of the world. Damn right we should be part of the reconstruction effort; we did so with respect to the UK, Germany, France…and the mutual prosperity was astronomical. Rebuilding European countries (and let’s not forget similar exercises with Japan and Korea) has a proven great ROI. When this is done, we should have a great reconstruction effort in Ukraine, build up a great economy, and have fantastic ties with them and their enterprises going forward. Think generationally here. The world I described, most people couldn’t have imagined in 1945…or even 1955. But by 1970, Western Europe was prosperous.

For the people worried about the cost to the United States, a lot of American companies are wanting to get into a Russian-free Ukraine, but in particular the oil & gas companies who were just starting to really get the Ukrainian O&G industry going pre-February 2022 (which could have been another reason for Putin to move - he couldn't risk Ukraine replacing Russian gas, which Putin has now guaranteed will eventually happen).

But in general, this will lead to a much more stable Europe, which, again, is good for our economy, for those worried about how much this is costing us.

Edited January 27, 2023 by atomheartbevo

[Bevo 13527]

12 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

And how many of the vehicles that we've donated were just sitting around, either in storage, or on their way to storage.  Some people are acting like we are straight up giving Ukraine the money, or giving them our best stuff, when the fucking M113s entered service in 1960 and the Bradley's entered in 1981.

As a matter of fact, the Army is in the process of replacing over 2,800 M113s with the Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle (which is based on the Bradley chassis, but not the existing Bradleys, which will also be replaced/are being replaced by the AMPVs and other systems.

And those Humvees?  We have over 230,000 of them in the Army and the Marine Corps, and they are being replaced by the Oshkosh L-ATV

Almost everything we are sending, with the exception of the HIMARS (which are themselves from the 1990s) and the M777s is old shit.  We were paying to store this shit and now it's being put to good use.

For the people worried about the cost to the United States, a lot of American companies are wanting to get into a Russian-free Ukraine, but in particular the oil & gas companies who were just starting to really get the Ukrainian O&G industry going pre-February 2022 (which could have been another reason for Putin to move - he couldn't risk Ukraine replacing Russian gas, which Putin has now guaranteed will eventually happen).

But in general, this will lead to a much more stable Europe, which, again, is good for our economy, for those worried about how much this is costing us.

For the record, my issue was with bullshit stats. Just give me the facts and I can form my own opinions.

 

[The Dog 43805]

27 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

Almost everything we are sending, with the exception of the HIMARS (which are themselves from the 1990s) and the M777s is old shit.

and HIMARS are cheap - it's literally a GMLRS launcher on a (heavily armored) tactical truck.

4 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

So, every person who thought that we could utterly destroy the conventional Russian military with a couple hundred billion dollars, and no American casualties, raise your hand.

Seriously. This war is one of the greatest “bang for our buck” exercises ever. And yes, we should damn well acknowledge the huge price that is being paid in Ukrainian blood and suffering, on behalf of themselves and the rest of the world. Damn right we should be part of the reconstruction effort; we did so with respect to the UK, Germany, France…and the mutual prosperity was astronomical. Rebuilding European countries (and let’s not forget similar exercises with Japan and Korea) has a proven great ROI. When this is done, we should have a great reconstruction effort in Ukraine, build up a great economy, and have fantastic ties with them and their enterprises going forward. Think generationally here. The world I described, most people couldn’t have imagined in 1945…or even 1955. But by 1970, Western Europe was prosperous.

this should be hammered into anyone who thinks this "costs too much".